brought his blunt fingertips together in a position of prayer. When he leaned across his desk toward her, she sank lower in her own chair. “Don’t you? How very strange.”
“It’s not strange. You can’t marry her. You don’t love her. You and she are too different to care for each other as a man and wife should.”
His eyes darkened in a way that made him seem more alive than any man she’d ever known. “I wasn’t referring to Jacinda. I was talking about you … and me and how strange that I should feel … so much—” He stopped. “When for all practical purposes we just met.”
His eyes bored into hers with that piercing intensity that left her breathless. Once again she felt connected to him by some dark, forbidden, primal force.
“I never anticipated this wrinkle when I suggested a marriage with a Murray daughter,” he murmured.
When his eyes slid over her body again in that devouring way, her heart raced. Her tall, slim figure wasn’t appealing to most men. She’d come to believe there was nothing special about her. Could he possibly be as attracted to her as she was to him?
“You don’t love her,” she repeated even more shakily.
“Love? No. I don’t love her. How could I? I barely know her.”
“You see!”
“Your father chose her, and she agreed.”
“Because she’s always done everything he tells her to.”
“You, however, would not have agreed so easily?” He paused. “Love does not matter to me in the least. But now I find myself curious about his choice of brides. And … even more curious about you. I want to get to know you better.” His tone remained disturbingly intimate.
She remembered his revolving bedroom door and the parade of voluptuous blondes who’d passed through it. Was he so base he’d think it nothing to seduce his future wife’s sister and then discard her, too?
“You’ve made no secret of how you feel about my father,” she whispered with growing wariness. “Why marry his daughter?”
“Business. There are all these rumors in the press that I want to destroy Murray Oil, a company that once belonged to my beloved father.”
“It makes perfect sense.”
“No, it doesn’t. I would never pay an immense amount of money for a valuable property in order to destroy it.”
“But you think my father blackened your father’s name and then profited after buying your father out. That’s why you’re so determined to destroy everything he’s built, everything he loves … including Jaycee.”
His lips thinned. Suddenly, his eyes were arctic. “My father built Murray Oil, not yours. Only back then it was called Sullivan and Murray Oil. Your father seized the opportunity, when my dad was down, to buy him out at five cents on the dollar.”
“My father made the company what it is today.”
“Well, now I’m going to take it over and improve upon it. Marriage to a Murray daughter will reassure the numerous employees that family, not a vengeful marauder, will be at the helm of the business.”
“That would be a lie. You are a marauder, and you’re not family.”
“Not yet,” he amended. “But a few Saturdays hence, if I marry Jaycee, we will be … family”
“Never. Not over my dead body!” She expelled the words in an outraged gasp.
“The thought of anything so awful happening to your delectable body is hateful to me.” When he hesitated, his avid, searching expression made her warm again.
“Okay,” he said. “Let’s say I take you at your word. You’re here to save your sister from me. And you’d die before you’d let me marry her. Is that right?”
“Essentially.”
“What else would you do to stop me? Surely there is some lesser, more appealing sacrifice you’d be willing to make to inspire me to change my mind.”
“I … don’t know what you mean.”
“Well, what if I were to agree to your proposal and forgo marriage to your lovely sister, a woman you say is so un-suited to my temperament I could never love her—I want to know what I will get in return.”
“Do you always have to get something in return? You wouldn’t actually be making a sacrifice.”
His smile was a triumphant flash of white against his deeply tanned skin. “Always. Most decidedly. My hypothetical marriage to your sister is a business deal, after all. As a businessman, I would require compensation for letting the deal fall through.”
Awful man.
His blue eyes stung her, causing the pulse in her throat to hammer frantically.
“Maybe … er … the satisfaction of doing a good deed for once in your life?” she said.
He laughed. “That’s a refreshing idea if ever I heard one, and from a very charming woman—but, like most humans, I’m driven by the desire to avoid pain and pursue pleasure.”
“And to think—I imagined you to be primarily driven by greed. Well, I don’t have any money.”
“I don’t want your money.”
“What do you want, then?”
“I think you know,” he said silkily, leaning closer. “You. You interest me … quite a lot. I believe we could give each other immense pleasure … under the right circumstances.”
The unavoidable heat in his eyes caused an unwanted shock wave of fiery prickles to spread through her body. She’d seriously underestimated the risk of confronting this man.
“In fact, I think we both knew what we wanted the moment we looked at each other today,” he said.
He wanted her.
And even though he was promised to Jaycee, he didn’t have a qualm about acknowledging his impossible, unsavory need for the skinnier, plainer, older sister. Maybe the thought of bedding his future wife’s sister improved upon his original idea of revenge. Or maybe he was simply a man who never denied himself a female who might amuse him, however briefly. If any of those assumptions were true, he was too horrible for words.
“I’m hungry,” he continued. “Why don’t we discuss your proposition over dinner,” he said.
“No. I couldn’t possibly. You’ve said more than enough to convince me of the kind of man you are.”
“Who are you kidding? You were prejudiced against me before you showed up here. If I’d played the saint, you would have still thought me the devil … and yet you would have also still … been secretly attracted. And you are attracted to me. Admit it.”
Stunned at his boldness,
